


Exception to the Rule

by Sibilant



Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Collaboration, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Moobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-25 23:14:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7550977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sibilant/pseuds/Sibilant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John knows himself, and he knows what he likes. Except for the times when he doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exception to the Rule

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marourin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marourin/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Funny Little Bird [Fanart]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6524200) by [marourin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marourin/pseuds/marourin). 



> Happy (four days after your) birthday, Marou! May the fountain of your ever-amazing art, cracky or otherwise, never run dry.
> 
> And to the rest of fandom: happy fourth TDKR anniversary!
> 
> Thank you to pyromancer for the speedy beta (she looked it over at the airport before boarding her plane, guys!), and whiskyrunner for helping me work out the lingering snags. All remaining errors are my own.

Before now, if pressed to give a definite, one-choice-only answer, John probably would've called himself a legs man. Or an ass man.

(He might have tried amending that to a legs-and-ass man, maybe - after several drinks and a consequently impaired brain-to-mouth filter - earnestly arguing that the ass and the legs function as a unit, and therefore should be counted as a single choice.)

But, in all honesty, John is a whole package man. Where some men have dating profiles with a list of specifications longer than their dicks, John’s hypothetical dating profile would probably read something like: nice, normal (for a given definition of normal), good-looking guy would like to meet a nice, normal, good-looking someone who doesn't mind him working night shift, doesn't expect too much, and doesn't ask too many questions.

Which just makes this… thing - this ongoing, almost a year-long _thing_ \- with Bane all the more baffling, really.

Because there is nothing nice or normal or even _proportionate_ about Bane. Not with his larger than life presence, his hypercritical taskmaster tendencies, and, oh yes, like John could ever forget— his number-one-suspect status with the GCPD, FBI, CIA, NSA, and every other acronym-loving, US-based law enforcement agency that anyone would care to name. He might, John supposes, be good-looking, but it's not like John can tell, thanks to that mack truck grille permanently strapped to Bane's face.

All John can really tell is that Bane blows all of John’s supposed preferences out of the water.

Sometimes - like right now - it’s even semi-literal.

John leans against the doorjamb, and watches as Bane reclines, as best as he can, in the bathtub. He barely fits in it, but it's a hell of a lot better than Bane trying to cram himself into the corner shower, which looks like it can barely accommodate John, let alone six-foot-something of (possibly, hopefully) former terrorist.

With anyone else, before all this, John would’ve already moved closer, maybe angled to get an invite into the bathtub, casually flirtatious. He would’ve sat on the edge of the tub, at the very least, and trailed his fingers through the water, admiring his lover’s flushed, damp skin, their body all on display.

Not so now, with Bane. With Bane, casual flirtation is pointless, verging on counterproductive. Why play when John can just strip out of his clothes, or tug Bane out of his? With Bane, the closest John gets to relaxed intimacy is talking shop: post-fight breakdowns, outlining future plans of attack, debating the advantages and disadvantages of specific tactics. With Bane, John’s attention isn’t fixed on the whole package so much as it’s fixed on—

“Moobs,” John says. Blurts, more like.

At the sound of John’s voice, Bane blinks and looks up. His arms are braced along the rim of the tub, like the world’s burliest unintentional softcore porn star.

“Moobs?” Bane repeats, careful and dubious, like he’s testing out a foreign word on his tongue. Stray drops of water gather at the hollow of his throat, cling to his pecs, and John’s brain disengages some more.

“Yeah, they’re—” John gestures at his own chest with both hands, mimes cupping it. “You know.”

Bane, his expression of polite inquiry says, does not know.

“It’s not important.” John waves a hand. “It just— slipped out. It’s late, I’m tired, I…” He trails off as one of those droplets slips southward along Bane’s chest, dragging John’s gaze along with it. Operating on some impulse below conscious thought, John pushes off the doorjamb, and steps into the bathroom. “You’ve— I mean, I’m just going to—” He’s vaguely aware that Bane is still looking at him in confusion, but rather than continue trying to explain, John kneels down beside the tub, leans forward, following that droplet like a beacon, and shoves his face against Bane’s chest.

Bane jerks, surprised, and water sloshes over the side of the tub, soaking into the fabric of John’s undersuit. John doesn’t really notice. Or care. It’s kind of hard to, with the majority of his brain’s processing power being rerouted into cataloguing the broad planes and contours of Bane’s pectoral muscles.

It’s not like pressing his face against a pair of breasts. It’s not even like pressing up the handful of guys John’s been with. John isn’t rubbing his cheek against soft curves or chiselled muscle. Bane’s skin is crisscrossed with scars, evidence of a life hard-lived, and while he’s built, it’s in the manner of a circus strongman: built for strength, not sculpted aesthetic perfection. There’s some softness overlying that solidity, all that powerful muscle, and John’s never thought of himself as a tits man, seriously, but, in light of current evidence, he might have to consider revising that opinion.

John presses his cheek against one pec, nuzzling, enjoying the sensation of slight give before solid muscle, palms himself through his pants, not bothering to be subtle about it. His body is already too-warm. He’s gripped by the urge to reach up and push Bane’s pecs together, create an inviting valley. Except that would require taking his hand off his dick, and John isn’t really feeling the inclination to do that just yet.

Bane shifts, and John is distracted all over again by the play of muscle and skin. He doesn’t lift his head, even when Bane says, with a touch of bemusement in his voice, “This arouses you.”

John makes a vague noise of agreement. “Was that a question or a statement?” he asks Bane’s left nipple.

Bane’s chest jumps as he huffs out a short, dry chuckle. And John’s just about to tell him to do that again, when Bane stands up abruptly, water sluicing off his body, and John has to jump back or be knocked over.

When he looks up, he’s greeted by the sight of Bane’s dick, already starting to harden. Bane has always been remarkably easy in that respect, right from the start of this… thing, this unnamed _thing_ they have going on. _Something_ about Bane had to be easy, John supposes - law of averages and all that.

Bane steps out of the bath, scoops John up in passing. He half-guides, half-manhandles him into the adjoining bedroom, and tosses him onto the bed. It’s all done with that unbelievable, effortless strength that had once intimidated John, but nowadays just goes straight to his dick, makes it through.

(Okay, sometimes it still intimidates John. John would have to be an idiot with the survival instinct of a gnat if some part of him wasn’t wary. But he’s not right now.)

This - ‘this’ being Bane manhandling John, tossing him around - is generally the prelude to John getting fucked on his hands and knees, or maybe being folded in half, Bane pressing John’s knees to his chest as he fucks into him with deep, unrelenting strokes. It’s more like fighting than fucking sometimes, rough and fuelled by residual adrenaline. And usually John’s okay with that. More than okay with it, if he’s being totally honest, because there have been plenty of nights where John exacerbates things, twisting about, thrashing, so Bane _has_ to keep him pinned, hands clamped on the back of John’s neck, or his shoulders, or his thighs, fucking into John harder until John is exhausted and pliant from it.

But tonight, his dick, or some part of John’s brain - his lizard brain, probably - seems to have other ideas. Tonight, John wants to _look_ , and keep looking, and— and—

Hell, he doesn’t even know what. Confused and ambivalent seems to be John’s permanent state of being once he gets within a certain range of Bane, sometimes with a side order of wary, or a double helping of righteous indignation.

The lighting in the bedroom is shitty - a single, bare bulb that casts sinister, B-grade horror movie shadows on everything outside its light radius. But maybe— maybe as long as Bane keeps his shoulders pulled back like that, and stays within the crappy lighting, it’ll be fine. John can work out what he wants, what his maybe-lizard brain was hoping to achieve by shoving his face into Bane’s chest, while Bane fucks him through the mattress.

Then Bane grabs John’s arms, pins them to his sides. He looms over him, blocking out the light and casting himself into half-silhouette, and John curses. He can’t touch because Bane has him trapped, can’t even _see_ properly because Bane is a goddamn human solar eclipse.

John grips Bane’s forearms - the furthest he can reach - and pushes. It’s like pushing against rebar. But let it never be said that John is the type to give up on the first attempt. He pushes again, harder, and this time he actually succeeds in sliding out from under Bane. Just by an inch or so, but still.

Bane looks down at him, brow furrowed. “What are you doing?”

“I want to see,” John says, and keeps pushing.

Bane’s frown deepens. “You wish to see _what_?” He rears up off John, his shoulders pulled back again.

John swallows. The lighting is still crappy, but it’s enough to highlight the curve of Bane’s chest, his shoulders, the lingering drops of water. A hot jolt shoots through John, makes his dick throb, and, _yeah—_ John knows what he wants now.

“I—” His voice comes out as a croak. He clears his throat, tries again. “Okay, so, I swear I’m not trying to be weird or anything, I just think— well, I _know_ that I _—_ ” He stops with a grimace, hearing himself.

 _Jesus Christ, Blake,_ he thinks. _Get it together._

He risks life and limb on a regular basis, fighting the worst of Gotham’s very considerable worst. He’s taken on the mantle of Batman. He was an officer of the law. He can look Bane in the eye, and say this without stumbling over the words.

John takes a deep breath. “Can I jerk off onto your chest? Because I’d like to. Do that. If you don’t have any objections.”

Alright, so there was a slight hitch there. No stumbling, though. John will take it. Nothing in life ever goes perfectly smoothly, after all.

He’s ready for Bane to say no. For him to turn this into something else, possibly even some kind of impromptu training exercise - dangling an unlikely prize in front of John to goad him into sparring. Bane is crazily fond of incidental teaching moments. But Bane says nothing, and when John peers at him, curious and suspicious, he sees that the corners of Bane’s eyes are crinkled, in that way that John has come to recognise as Bane smiling with inordinate amusement.

John lifts his chin. He’s never enjoyed being laughed at (who does, really?), but about this, with Bane, John honestly doesn’t care if Bane is laughing at him or not. Yet another thing where Bane is the exception, apparently.

It’s just, in the grand scheme of things - a scheme that includes the aforementioned life and limb-risking, as well as people who will remain nameless once threatening a nuclear holocaust - it seems kind of petty to get pissed over being laughed at for a… surprise kink.

Priorities, John has some of them right.

So when Bane’s silence goes on, grinding into awkward territory, John flops back onto the bed, saying, “Look, let’s ignore I said that. Like I said before, I’m tired, and I say stupid shit when I’m tired. Let’s just— reset. Forget I opened my mouth, do the usual.” Because John’s still hard, and he’ll be damned if he endured the weirdness only to head home without getting off.

“Is that what you want?” Bane says finally, head tilted. “To forget about it?”

John groans and scrubs at his face. He needs to cut this off at the pass. Only thing worse than going home without getting off is Bane turning the evening into some erection-killing hybrid of a psychotherapy session and a primer on sex slang, his questions hitting John with the precision of a guided missile barrage.

“It doesn’t matter. I thought—” John waves a hand. “I don’t know what I thought. I mean, yeah, if you were up for it, I’d be into it, but—”

“Very well,” Bane says.

John pauses, processing that. He squints at Bane. “Very well what?”

Rather than answer, Bane clambers onto the bed, nudging John over, and leans back against the headboard, almost slouching. It’s like watching a glacier in reverse: slow and inexorable and… _weird_.

Weird, because this is not what they do. But John is the one who asked, he’s the one who started this - admittedly without thinking or forethought - and John’s always found forging ahead (Bane might say blundering ahead) easier than backtracking, doubts and all. So—

“Right, okay.” John scrambles out of his remaining clothing, committing, in case Bane changes his mind, just to screw with him. John wouldn’t put it past him.

John shuffles up onto his knees, and straddles Bane’s chest, his legs spread wider than he’s ever had to with anyone else. It’s like straddling a bull.

(Not that John, born and raised in Gotham as he was, has ever straddled a bull, or any other animal, for that matter. So perhaps it’s more accurate to say it’s what John imagines straddling a bull would be like. But whatever.)

Bane is just… lying there. It’s not exactly centrefold material, although the thought of Bane posing like a centrefold model threatens to break John’s brain, and not in a good-hot way, so it’s probably just as well he isn’t.

John keeps his eyes trained on Bane’s chest as he takes himself in hand. Gives himself an slow stroke, teasing over the head on the upstroke. His balls tighten, arousal spiking upward. This isn’t going to take John long at all. Except—

Except Bane is watching him, eyes narrowed slightly, and John’s skin prickles, discomforted.

He’s accustomed to being on the receiving end of Bane’s attention, but not like this. Bane watches John while sparring, analysing his form, on the lookout for weak spots and flaws. He watches John when they fuck, sometimes, only his eyes heavy-lidded then, all that disconcerting focus and too-sharp intelligence clouded by Bane’s desire to get off. They’ve never done anything like _this_ , with Bane’s attention is focused solely on John, nothing to distract him.

John feels like he’s been stripped of all his skin, raw and vulnerable; his upbringing - the parts that taught him that kicking and snarling, smashing and breaking were preferable to feeling vulnerable - rears its head. John almost meets Bane’s stare dead on, challenging, ready to turn this into a fight if need be.

Almost, but doesn’t, because John is the one who started this, and turning it into a fight would be another kind of backtracking. So John ducks his head instead, keeps his eyes down and focused on Bane’s chest. Grips himself harder, redoubles his efforts.

It’s akin to pushing a stone uphill after losing his footing for a moment. It takes him a little longer than it first did to get back up there, to that point where the build of arousal feels almost inexorable, a weight ready to send him toppling over the edge—

Bane sighs, shifts against the headboard - restless, impatient - and jostles John.

John has had far too much experience with Bane’s out-of-the-blue training attacks to be thrown off-balance, but he jerks his head up and levels a narrow look at Bane, because is Bane _trying_ to ruin this?

Bane meets his stare, eyes intent. He doesn’t look away, and John’s breath catches in his throat, the rhythm of his strokes stuttering. His arousal is on the verge of ebbing again, when Bane reaches up, covers John’s hand with his, pushes him to move again. His other hand comes up to grip John’s hip, and he tugs, urging John closer, until the head of John’s cock brushes against Bane’s chest, a tease of skin on skin, and the gut punch of want that hits John takes him entirely by surprise.

“Oh,” John says, a little nonsensically. “Oh, okay, yeah. _Yeah._ ” His dick pulses, a dribble of pre-come slicking the head. It drips over their fingers, onto Bane’s chest, makes the glide wetter, easier.

They keep moving like that, in synch, Bane guiding John into it, setting the pace. Bane is observant enough, familiar enough with John’s body to know the speed John tends to go at. His grip is tighter than John’s normally is, and he pauses once or twice at the wrong moment, but in a way it’s better, more arousing for the startle.

Bane has his head tipped head back slightly - so he can keep watching John, even at this close range, John supposes - but it has the unintentional effect of giving him a slightly imperious cast. Bane is _literally_ looking down his nose at John, or at least looking down his nose at John’s dick, but that isn’t turning John off one bit, not now.

The muscles of Bane’s chest and arms are bulging and flexing as he urges John on, and it goes to John’s head, both the sight and the knowledge of all that strength and power willingly staying beneath him, allowing— no, _encouraging_ John to mess him up.

Bane brushes his fingers across the sensitive head of John’s cock, tightens his grip even further around John’s fist, urging him into a particularly dexterous stroke that rockets John right up to the edge, makes his muscles tense and his toes curl. Another stroke, and John groans, low in his throat, as his orgasm rolls through him in a hot, pulsing wave, one that has him fighting to keep his eyes open, unwilling to miss the sight of his come striping Bane’s chest.

Bane strokes him through it, only letting go when John eventually squirms, oversensitive. Without the support of Bane’s hands, John sags sideways onto the bed. One of his legs is still thrown across Bane’s chest. It’s not comfortable, but John doesn’t think he has enough motor control to move yet.

He doesn’t even have enough motor control to duck away when Bane starts petting his hair, although he does manage a somewhat muzzy, “What the fuck?” and then: “Was that weird?”

“It was agreeable,” Bane says, and John snorts.

He rearranges himself, until he’s close enough to reach out and run a finger through the mess on Bane’s chest. John’s not possessive, per se. It doesn’t fill him with primal satisfaction, like an animal marking his territory. But it does send a strange thrill down his spine, amazed that Bane _let_ him do that.

He’s amazed, too, that Bane actually waits until John has gotten his breath back for a whole minute before he tugs at John’s leg, nudging his thighs apart with the complete lack of subtlety that John is more accustomed to.

“Mm, okay,” John says, agreeable, and spreads his legs wider.

It’s too soon for him to get hard again, let alone come, but John arches up anyway at the first inward press of Bane’s fingers, and again when Bane moves to replace his fingers with cock. It’s the least John can do, after how obliging Bane was about— everything.

This is something Bane has always enjoyed - fucking John long after John has orgasmed, until he’s a shuddering, overstimulated mess, torn between wanting to claw away and clenching down to pull Bane in deeper. There’s probably some sort of psychological thing at play with Bane there - something about pushing past boundaries, if not outright bulldozing over them, whether John wants it or not. Something along those lines. It’s never just one thing with Bane, never _just_ about getting off. For all his immense physical presence, Bane lives in his head more than John does.

(But hey, John’s not going to judge, seeing as he’s the guy who requested - and got - what basically amounted to a titfuck less than ten minutes ago.)

It’s John’s turn now to be the clearheaded one, and he meets Bane’s eyes as Bane sinks into him. Unimpeded by his own need to come, he sees the way Bane’s eyes flicker, the tremble of his lashes as he fills John up. It’s an unexpectedly delicate sight.

And it’s— it’s _good_ this way, with John’s body post-orgasmic lax, but not fucked-out sore. The mindless, intense push-pull of pleasure bordering on pain is absent, and in its place is a tentative, dawning awareness. John is _there_ , wholly aware of Bane’s body, registering and answering all his unspoken cues: the occasional hitch in his breathing, the fine trembling in his muscles.

When Bane adjusts his grip on John’s hips, hauling him closer, John reaches out to cover Bane’s hands with his own. He rolls his hips up as Bane fucks into him with deliberate, intent thrusts that John feels down to his bones. It’s nowhere near the roughest, hardest fuck they’ve ever had, and yet John’s chest feels tight, like he’s run for miles and his lungs can no longer draw in enough air.

He tightens his thighs against Bane’s sides, clenches down on him, and when Bane comes, raw and guttural, John _feels_ it - not only in the thrusts that rock the entire bed and make the headboard slam against the wall, but in the shudder that runs the length of Bane’s body, and the harshness of his breathing; in the greedy, reflexive way he clutches at John, fingers squeezing, and squeezing, and not letting go.

 

* * *

 

It seems pleasant enough, until Bane dozes off, still clutching John, and John realises he can’t move.

They’re not spooning, but it’s a near thing, Bane’s arm a dead weight across John’s body, like a log across a hiking trail. And even that’d be okay, if it weren't for the fact that John seriously needs to get up soon. The Nightwing costume isn’t just going to put itself on and have a rooftop meeting with Gordon, after all. Good thing John has been trained, by Bane even, to escape from trickier situations.

Bane wakes, going from dead to the world to completely alert, with zero transition state. He scans the room, eyes narrowed, until he spots John sitting on the edge of the bed, and relaxes. He scratches at his chest, scattering small flakes of dried come onto the bed.

John snickers like a twelve year old. Can’t help it. Snickers again when Bane gives him a look of mild exasperation, then goes to the bathroom to run a washcloth under warm water. It takes a while, pipes clanking and clunking theatrically like they’re part of a children’s cartoon, rather than a derelict, abandoned apartment in the Narrows. There’s a water stain on the ceiling that, if John tilts his head and squints, looks like Edvard Munch’s _The Scream_. Charming.

“You know, you really gotta stop hanging out in these shitholes,” John says. He holds the washcloth out. “The water pressure is always crap, assuming it works at all.”

“I’ve lived in far worse quarters,” Bane replies, wiping John’s spunk off his chest. John’s kind of sorry to see it go.

“Yeah, I’ll bet you have.” John sits on the edge of the bed, and pauses to marshall his words into some semblance of order. “But what I’m saying is, you don’t have to.” Another pause. “My place is small, but it’s not any smaller than this place—” he gestures around at their surrounds, “—and I don’t live in a very populated neighbourhood.” When Bane only frowns, the look in his eyes almost skittish, John changes tack. “Or there’s the Cave, I guess. If you’re into cold and dreary, guano-spattered chic.”

Bane pauses in cleaning himself up, eyeing John with curiosity (which John is used to) and open surprise (which John is not). “I was under the impression you didn’t appreciate my presence in Wayne’s former fortress.”

“Yeah, well…” John rubs his jaw. “That was then, and this is now.” He shrugs. It doesn’t come out as casual and relaxed as he was aiming for, but it’ll do. “Besides, it’s not like I’m offering you the keys to a penthouse suite or something. I mean, did I mention the guano?”

“You did.”

“And yet you’re still turning down an offer to squat in my apartment in favour of squatting in said guano-covered cave.”

“Yes,” Bane says simply, and maybe a little condescendingly, like John is a small child who’s managed to grasp a complex theory.

John huffs out a disbelieving laugh. “Okay, fine. Have it your way, Bear Grylls.” He looks around, taking in the dubious ambiance of the bedroom, committing its shitty details to memory.

It’s (probably, hopefully) the last time they’ll end up here, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> The ending is a glancing reference to one of marourin's other artworks, [Robin's Nest](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7092406). Shuffling slowly toward weird quasi-domesticity.


End file.
